Well, we have a space for advertising on the Book of PDR now. Over in the sidebar, under the menu, I’m sure you can see it. I had resisted doing such a thing because it is sort of ridiculous, but now I’ve done it anyway. Isn’t that a great story? It sure is. The bottom line is that it would be cool to make any amount of money, no matter how small, from this website, seeing as it is one of the main things I enjoy in life. It may be a long while before you actually see any ad there, though, since I don’t get a lot of hits to this site and people probably prefer to advertise in places that do.

Haiku!

In a world of pie.
One man must learn about love
And eat all the pie.

Here’s a terrible idea for a video game: The alien bad guys are summoning their armies through a Star Portal Machine that you destroy in the first level. After that you just have to kill the hordes that have already made it through, so there is constantly fewer dudes. As the levels go on they just keep getting easier and easier because there isn’t many bad guys left. The final level is just you leading an army against the one alien left who is just scared and hiding. It’ll be easy, but think of the sense of power you’d get. You’d be like, a really terrible guy!

What’s in a name? That’s the sort of question that arises when you watch the Canadian Propaganda Piece I am reviewing this time around.

So this one starts out with some people (Europeans) walking until they are next to some other people (North American Natives, I would assume in Canada what with that being the point). So the Natives speak in some weird gibberish code* and the Head European asks his friendly neighborhood priest to translate. The priest informs the Head European that the Natives have invited them to the nation and it is called “Canada” and, yes, that’s right, this commercial is about the secret origin of Canada’s name. Anyway, everyone is happy to know the name of the nation except one guy: He’s not the priest and he’s not the Head European, so basically we don’t know who he is. We just have to imagine. Probably he’s the ship’s carpeter.

* I am 1/256 Wampanoag, so I am allowed to make this joke. (It’s my only race card, let me play it!)

Anyway this guy is so sick of putting down carpet on the ship that when a chance to show off comes up he is All Over It. Basically he’s like “I know that word! That’s not the name of the nation! The old man is just talking about the village down there!” but the priest stands by his translation and Canada is called Canada forever after.

Once again I’m sure that what we are seeing here is not an actual event that played out. Yes the name Canada likely comes from the word for village in some language (and I feel somewhat ashamed that I don’t know which), but it is a safe bet that the Pedant vs. Priest argument we see unfold here was made up solely for our benefit. And I am totally okay with that! This one has several lines I like to quote and would be easily recognized by others who grew up in the right era. Job well done!

I also like the music throughout this piece. It ramps up the drama of the whole affair, which is good considering this is a commercial where one group of people invite some other people in to talk and the closest thing we have to a conflict is a disagreement over what a word means. Not exactly a drama-explosion no matter how many . So the music plays throughout to keep emotions from dying. In a way it reminds me of the Irish Kids moment and my mind will try to tack on the upbeat jig from that one. Really, if they ended all of these with a jig there’d be a lot more happy endings.

Anyway, as I said, I do like this one. I’m going to give it Four and a Half out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake.

In other news, the comments section of YouTube is, as always, filled with idiotic arguments, in this case about how evil Whitey is for conquering the natives. Now I didn’t stray too far into the comments (I am a human being and we can only take so many YouTube comments), but I didn’t see any discussion of the real scandal in here: Note that the religious man is proven wrong and just flat out denies it. This commercial is CLEARLY trying A) to depict religious persons as stubborn and foolish, or B) Show that God intervened to make sure that Canada got the right name. That is obviously what people on the Internet need to be arguing about. (Edit: I’ve linked to an official video since the original post, so I don’t know/care if that argument is still in the comments)

I am now on the Twitter. Who would have thought that this could have ever occurred? How many people bothered to think about it at all? Apart from me, probably not many. I guess a lot has changed since 2009. I still don’t have one of those mobile devices that let’s one do the Internet from wherever they want, but I’ve softened on the idea that I can’t fit my thoughts into small chunks. I’m totally going to start cutting my thoughts into bite-size chunks now forever.

You can totally see my first post directly under this one. Why is that? That is because Marq, my near-silent partner in this whole website endeavour, has set things up so anything I post on Twitter still ends up here, on the site where I obsessively collect everything I do! Hooray! Thanks, Marq!

So the moral of this story is, things barely change for people reading the site, but I’m also out on other sites. Kinda neat.

Okay, as I said previously, today’s SecGov update is just some single thing I doodled at work one time long ago. But unlike I said previously, it will not be immediately followed by my next storyline. Instead, to give me just a little bit more time to heal my drawing parts, Marq will be back on Thursday’s page with another single page strip. Then, hopefully, next week will be back in action.

In other news, I think I have updated all the automatic credit card payments that I need to with my new credit card information. It is a relief to have it done, though in the process I discovered that there has been a thirty dollar a month payment I have been making for years and I simply don’t know what it was for. All this time I just assumed it had something to do with the site, but apparently not. The website it says I am paying has no explanation of what they do or anything. So I am not giving these people my new information (and anyway I don’t think I would know how to do so if I wanted to).

Assuming this doesn’t turn out to be something important that I don’t understand, it is perfectly likely that I am about to stop paying an unnecessary monthly fee that I have probably sunk thousands into at this point.

I have resolutions to announce regarding my aforementioned missing wallet. It was indeed found in the theatre where it had been assumed to have been lost. I got a call (as expected, during day-person hours) and was told I could go pick it up.

SO I DID THAT!

I am now, once again, in possession of my wallet. So that’s a plus. Unfortunately, I had cancelled my credit cards and my bank card, so now I have to get the replacements for those. But those are the easiest things to replace that were in there anyhow, so it is a small price to pay. As long as I remember to update all my online payment things to the new credit card numbers when I get them. The Internet needs this information.

REMEMBER TO DO THAT PDR!

Something I forgot to mention before, though: Just hours before I lost the wallet, I also lost my sunglasses. This was less significant. Sure, I hate to venture into cursed natural light without my sunglasses…

…but I lose sunglasses at a rate of something like three or four a year. I don’t like to lose them, but I’m hardened to that particular loss.

Still, after I looked for the missing eyewear, the waitress in the restaurant told me she’d keep a look out for them so when I went downtown to get the wallet, I stopped in at that restaurant, it being practically next to the cinema. The same young lady was working there today and she was not only able to return my sunglasses, she had the perplexing story that they were apparently already behind the counter pretty much as soon as I’d left the previous day. It is unknown how that occurred. My current leading theory is that I did not, as originally thought, lose the glasses while sitting, but perhaps near the door as I first removed them upon entering. From there they were perhaps found by some other employee found and put behind the counter even as we ate. Could be true! But we’ll never know!

So anyway, in these two days I have managed to lose a bunch of stuff and then get it back. The moral is: In life, stuff happens, deal with it. This is a common moral in my life.